Impacts of DG penetration in the reliability of Distribution Systems

The paper investigates the impact of penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) on the reliability of a radial distribution network. The authors evaluate the reliability of a portion of RBTS (Roy Billinton Test System) network with and without DG connection at different load points. Reliability assessment is performed using the analytical and Monte Carlo simulation techniques and enhancement of reliability is compared with both methods for DG placement at different load points. It is found that the analytical evaluation method only evaluates the expected values. The expected values do not give any information on the variability of the indices, which could happen in practice. On the other hand, Monte Carlo simulation is able to take into account the variability of the indices. The results demonstrate that DG penetration does improve the reliability of the radial distribution network and the location of DG in the network has an impact on the extent of improvement. Results clearly indicate that different locations give different reliability improvements and the location with the best improvement might be chosen.